This came up during a conversation this morning. What’s your favorite individual shot?
Off the top of my head, I came up with three that floored me:
Lost, “Walkabout”…
…seeing Locke in the wheelchair for the first time.
Star Trek: TNG, “The Best of Both Worlds”…
…the first shot of Picard as a Borg. My 13-year-old mind exploded.
BSG, “Exodus Part 2”…
…several stunning moments, I guess my favorite was as Galactica fell towards New Caprica, following the Viper out the launch tube and through the fire into the atmosphere. Hell, I got goosebumps just typing that.
Those are mostly badass/whoa moments, surely there’s others more of the “pretty” variety. I recall a good ER episode where Clooney’s character was diving through floodwater looking for a child, helicopter hovering overhead, and he burst through the water holding the boy just as the spotlight moved over that spot. (I figure “Dr. Ross saves a boy” isn’t too spoilerific…)
Heh. First thing that sprang to mind was the last second (or I suppose ~7 seconds) of BSG season 3.
The last ~12 minutes is among the best I’ve ever seen on television, but that tracking shot from Starbuck & Lee to the sudden appearance of North America gives me goosebumps every time I see it.
Ivanhoe, Robert Taylor. Ivanhoe throwns his gauntlet down at Rebecca’s trial for a judgment by trial of combat.
The Sand Pebbles. After cutting the cable, Jake steps aboard San Pablo.
Deep Space Nine, one of the final episodes. Garak shoots Weyoun. The female shape shifter sighs, “That was the last Weyoun clone!” and Garak replies, “I was hoping you would say that.”
Twin Peaks - a dissolve from a top-down perspective of a roulette wheel to the iris of a stricken person’s unblinking eye.
This is the first shot I ever saw of Twin Peaks, just flipping through the channels - I had been avoiding it because it was so damned popular and I was snobby little twit. That shot drew me in and made me decide that I would have to watch the show after all.
If you’re in to Deep Space Nine, I nominate the last shot from Call to Arms, the last episode of season 5. Spoilers for this ten year old show below…
DS9 has just fallen into Dominion control after a lengthy (and visually awesome) battle sequence. The last of the Starfleet crew from DS9 flee aboard the badly damaged Defiant, escorted by a single Klingon ship. Things have never looked so grim for our heroes.
The last shot of the show is the two ships passing through empty space… suddenly they meet a huge fleet of Starfleet and Klingon ships headed right back for DS9. The two ships turn around and fall into formation, and the screen fades to black as we realize the real battle hasn’t even begun.
Of course, they let all the air out of it in the next episode, but boy howdy, what a way to end the season!
I’ve been watching a lot of the Sherlock Holmes series with Jeremy Brett. I can’t think of any one shot, but I’ve really been loving a lot of the cinematography in it.
I’ll nominate the final shot of The Blue Comet, the penultimate Sopranos episode. Tony’s world is collapsing, some of his closest associates are dead and dying and New York family killers are after him. He’s holed up in a safe house with what’s left of his crew. In the last shot, he’s holding the gun his just-murdered brother-in-law gave him, laying on a mattress - he looks like he’s in a coffin - and staring at the door, knowing they could bust in and come for him at any moment.
A sentimental favorite: the final shot of Star Trek: TNG. The camera rises from the poker table (all seven regulars in shot together), emerges through the hull, and tracks back as the Enterprise continues on its way – “the sky’s the limit,” as Picard said.
There are so many great moments in that installment, but I think the most haunting one was: when the Enterprise approaches Wolf-359 en route to Sector 001 (Earth), and they encounter the ruins of dozens of Starfleet ships that had been blown apart by the Borg.
Wait…Sam “leaped” into his own life? Why didn’t they stop the machine that kept him leaping? I assume it was at an earlier point in his life, but seriously, living a few years over again sure as HELL beats “Sam Beckett never made it home,” or whatever the shit-fest the ended the show was.
This. I’ve watched the first two seasons of the new Doctor Who now, and I just can’t start watching the third season because I know there won’t be a Rose. Rose and the Doctor were just perfect together. That scene broke my heart.
A few of my own…
In 24, season 3 when…
Jack has to execute his boss, Ryan Chapelle. Chapelle begs him to let him do it himself…he holds the gun up to his head…and he can’t do it. Jack takes the gun back and eventually shoots him in the head. Episode ends.
Again in 24, season 5 when…
The virus is released into CTU. Everybody is in their safe rooms…and then you see Edgar run up. He mouths Chloe…Chloe has tears in her eyes. And then Edge falls over, dead. Episode ends.
Lost, season 2…
I don’t remember it exactly, but the scene at the end of the episode where “Henry Gale” outlines exactly what he would do to trap the people out there looking for his balloon…IF he were an Other. What a genius masterpiece that last scene is.
Bablyon 5 episode, “Sleeping In Light,” when Sheridan gets up for his last day on Mimbar, and meets Delen, who has dressed up for Sunday because she had heard “from a fairly reliable source” that is what one does on a Sunday.
Another Babylon 5 episode, I think it’s The Long Twilight Struggle, the Centauri attack the Narn home world with mass drivers, and Longo is on ship to watch. There is a scene in which you can see him and what he is seeing (using fantastic Hubble Telescope photos for the space) and it’s clear that he realizes that he’s been wrong, and set into motion a terrible thing. The expression on his face is one of both realization and horror. I thought that scene alone should have garnered him an Emmy, despite the fact that not a word is spoken. The visuals tell it all.
*Twin Peaks * had a number of them, although the establishing shots, like the stop light swing in the wind, the owl hooting, and the ceiling fan in the Palmer house were extremely powerful for me. To this day, I can’t hear an owl hoot without shivering. One scene was when Laura Palmer’s mother has a vision of BOB coming relentlessly toward he, climbing over furniture without the slightest hesitation. That one actually gave me a nightmare. Another scene that was incredibly powerful was when Rhonda (the girl with Laura who lived and returned to Twin Peaks in very bad shape, thus in the hospital) had a vision of Laura Palmer’s torture, presumably immediately before her murder. Laura screams and screams, looking almost inhuman as she does it. Terrifying.
On The West Wing: Leo says, “I like you. I was trying to get it in under the wire.” His face is in shadow and you can see the light from behind him shining through his left eye. Wild and beautiful.
I came in here to mention this episode as well, but not this scene. It was the last one, where Sheridan faces the ships viewscreen, that has begun glowing. He reaches up the shade his eyes and says “Look at that, sun’s coming up.”
The whole of B-5 was full of “My favorite scenes” Best televsion ever, for my money. But that last shot was amazing. I wish I could know what he was seeing, but that would probably spoil things.
That scene broke my heart.